Service & Love

Fostering Angels Provides Foster Children with Free Clothing & Supplies

Fostering Angels in Elba offers a unique shopping experience. The store is only open to foster children and the families who care for them, and every item is free.

“Our volunteers have set it up basically like a store, and that’s how we want the kids to feel,” founder Melissa Wood says. “They go out with a shopping bag, a suitcase, or a backpack.”

Wood was recently honored by Silent Heroes of the Wiregrass, a program created by Wiregrass Electric Cooperative and WTVY to recognize people who help others and give back to their communities. Like past winners, she received a $1,000 grant.

Fostering Angels gives children and teens access to clothing and other items after they’ve been removed from their homes, whether it is a foster care situation or a child who has been taken in by another family member who doesn’t have the necessary supplies.

The store carries items for babies all the way up to kids aged 18. The store has clothes, shoes, baby items, toys, jewelry, school supplies, luggage, and children’s bedding — all items that have been donated since the store opened in 2024.

Donations pay Fostering Angels’ rent and utilities every month — the shop’s 2 biggest expenses. There are improvements volunteers would like to make to the building that Wood would like to buy 1 day.

Wood first saw a need for Fostering Angels when a friend’s daughter took in a foster child. Often, children removed from their homes leave with just a few items in a garbage bag, and sometimes they have nothing at all.

“God put it on my heart,” Wood says. Not everyone can be a foster parent, Wood says, and she hopes the community sees Fostering Angels as an opportunity to help children in need of support either as volunteers or through donations.

WEC Vice President of Member Services and Communication Stevie Sauls was on hand for Wood’s award presentation.

“Melissa and her volunteers at Fostering Angels exhibit such compassion for young people who are going through something we wish no child had to experience,” Sauls says. “Not only are they giving children a sense of hope at a dark time, but they’re also helping those families who take on the responsibility to foster a child.”